just less lonely
by steepedinwords
Summary: A quiet evening in.


There is all this time between when the cracks start to open up and when we finally fall apart. And it's only that time that we see one another, because we see out of ourselves through our cracks and into others through theirs. When did we see each other face to face? Not until you saw into my cracks and I saw into yours... But once the vessel cracks, the light can get in. The light can get out.  
-John Green, _Paper Towns_

* * *

They've been on the lam for thirty-seven days.

Nick's sitting on his bed poking at his junky cell phone, trying to hang onto the spotty wifi for long enough to look up his email. It's evening, and too wet to go out and explore London like they'd planned; their hostel room still smells like the takeout curry that was dinner, and rain's sheeting down the windows, washing city lights blurry against a black sky. He's just giving up on email when Cassie bangs out of the tiny bathroom and walks over to stand close by his knee, bare feet soundless on the carpet. Her toenails are iridescent blue, and she's wearing jeans, for once, in concession to the chill.

'Hey,' she says, and Nick looks up. She's holding out a comb.

'Thought you might want to practice your,' she pokes his arm, '_fine motor_ skills. You know how to braid?'

'My what?' Nick blinks, gets it, and sighs, tossing his phone aside. Cassie will get him to do what she wants sooner or later, so he might as well give in. Also, she's right, his Moving does need practice. He takes the comb resignedly and Cassie settles down cross-legged on the floor with her back to him. 'Pass me my bag?'

He twitches his hand at the leopard-print messenger bag lying on her bed, thinks _up_, and drops it on the tatty carpet in front of her. 'Okay. Um – tell me what to do?'

She twists to give him a look, and Nick's mouth twists in a grin. 'Hey, I never had a sister. How would I know?'

Cassie huffs, turning away again. 'Take a piece of hair, split it in three, and then cross left over centre, right over centre. That's it.'

Nick reaches down with his hands automatically before remembering he's supposed to be practicing, leans his elbows on his knees and clumsily follows her directions without touching her hair. She's watching him in the narrow mirror on the bathroom door. The world shrinks to a small yellow room, tatty carpet, bare bulb hanging from the ceiling, tangled indigo and pale gold curls.

Cassie pulls a book from her bag, not her sketchbook, or the novel she filched from his duffel, but the limp black book she keeps in an inside pocket like it's something precious. Nick twists a strand the wrong way, frowns in concentration and goes back to fix it.

(She doesn't have much stuff, for a teenage girl, and when they're not running for their lives, he tries to think of ways to give her some semblance of normal, even if it's just nail polish and terrible movies and schoolwork on Wednesday nights.)

He finishes the section of hair and tries another. Cassie's outlining blocks of text in blue, between the green and purple already striped over the pages, and yeah, it's a Bible. He's seen a lot of those, mostly shoved into hotel room drawers, but this one looks well-used. Well-loved, if the scuff marks, water stains, and scribbled notes are any indication.

The headache comes on quickly, pounding behind his eyes in the same prismatic colours as the force fields he can throw with his power. Nick hisses, drops Cassie's hair to fall messy over her shoulders again, and presses his fingertips into his closed eyes, feeling the pressure let up a little. His fingers feel stiff from the tiny, precise movements he's been making, wrists aching from holding still. He catches Cassie's glance in the mirror and she leans back into his knee, hard enough to say _it's okay, you'll be fine_, draws another blue stripe through a line of text. He can feel her breathing and the outline of her spine against his leg.

'Does it help?' he asks, more curious than aggressive, gesturing at the book in her lap.

Cassie stills, and Nick can feel her thinking, knows she's not scrambling for an answer, just trying to fit words to her explanation, because he's learning the way she thinks – and that's a terrifying thought, being around someone else long enough to do that.

'It's like Seeing, I guess,' she says finally. 'I only get bits and pieces of the picture, I don't get to see the whole thing till it happens, but in here – ' she taps the page, bright with rainbow colour, 'that's okay. It's not safe, nothing like this is, but it's. Something to hang onto?'

_And unlike Seeing, it doesn't change,_ Nick thinks, says aloud, 'I guess that makes sense.'

Cassie leans back into the hand he's combing through the mess he's made of her hair, and for once her eyes don't look ancient, like she's seen too much, too soon.

'It doesn't make things any easier,' she says. 'Just less lonely.'

* * *

A/N: Cassie's last line is a paraphrased quote from Mark Driscoll.


End file.
